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A Patient's Letter of Thanks

The Recovery Room People

The gurney rolled rapidly into the room as the anesthesiologist called out “#17”, guiding the patient into his spot in the maze of post-operative stations. Obviously in distress and intense pain, he was not fully awake. As he filled his numbered nook, a pair of skilled nurses immediately ministered to him, focusing on the management of his pain and comforting him in his distress. The surgeon, who had accompanied his patient and could see that he was in good hands, smacked him gently on the shoulder and was gone. The transfer to the recovery room and into the hands of the recovery room people was complete.

How many of you have been in the Post-Anesthetic Care Unit (PACU) of The Ottawa Hospital? Many, I am sure, but until recently, not I. Known to the well-informed as the “recovery room”, the PACU was a critical stop on my journey from diagnosis to successful surgery, culminating in my welcome discharge. As is the case with all surgical patients, on my way I visited the recovery room. My time spent at this stop was both enlightening and particularly moving.

For reasons having nothing to do with clean living or entitlement, I have been undeservedly spared extensive inpatient experiences. My last, on only previous surgical visit to The Ottawa Hospital was in 1943… a tonsillectomy. I have vivid memories of the experience as a seven-year-old, emerging from the anesthetic into a dark and forbidding environment, full of fear and foreboding as to what had happened to me. So much has changed since then at the old “Civic” Hospital that it is almost beyond description. There was sufficient risk attendant upon my recent surgical visit that my focus as on the process was acute. When it was all over, the extent of my appreciation of the inpatient process had increased one hundred fold.

Leading up to my hospital visit and during my stay, I had the benefit of superb diagnostic advice and extraordinary surgical and anesthesiology skills.

But it was the recovery room which afforded the most amazing glimpse of the dedication and thoroughgoing professionalism of a special group of nursing staffing in their working environment. For 28 hours, I lay on my gurney and watched the extraordinary world of the recovery room go by. As the name would suggest, the PACU is a large room with a central command post; a room which changes its configuration constantly as bays or stalls are created or eliminated by the opening and closing of hanging curtains, consuming a constant stream of post-surgical patients. Each of these nooks is occupied by different patients in various stages of recovery from the painless oblivion of anesthetic to the conscious world of reality and pain, trundled, safe at last, from the uncertainties of the operating room with their surgeons in tow, each visitor will depart hours later from the confines of the recovery room to the “floor” to complete their hospital stay.

Each patient awakens in the recovery room into the merciful midst of the welcoming world of the recovery room nursing staff. And what a gathering of nurses they are. Working one of three shifts a day, they spend their entire time in this stressful place committed to relieving pain and eliminating distress through care and compassion. These objectives, I learned, could not be achieved without relentless good cheer…imagine…cheerfulness all day, every day, whatever the provocation, the exigencies of one’s condition of the vicissitudes of those around you. A cheerfulness of a special kind, accompanied by compassion. Accompanied by a bottomless pit of compassion.

Their tasks consist of immediate post-operative nursing care. The ultimate in multitasking: shepherding the patient into consciousness, assessing his or her post-operative condition; isolating complaints, administering vital medication, and generally alleviating pain, obviously in some cases, excruciating pain. Throughout all this, they are feverishly at work comforting and consoling, assuring and reassuring the patient through his or her transition into consciousness.

Each post-operative patient is wheeled into their own nook (mine was #11) and is immediately surrounded by solicitous members of the nursing team, responsible to ensure the patient’s safe transport into the next stage. Soothing, touching, heartening, ministering with care, skill and dedication to the task. And when a moment of relief is upon her, the recovery room nurse spends it charting, charting and more charting. Recording every activity affecting the patient — medication administered, changes in vital signs, and observations made upon every attendance, ensuring by this process that the next caregiver will know what went before.

Elva Cavanagh looked after #11 during the day shift. Trained in nursing at the old Civic almost 40 years ago, she might be forgiven for displaying a spot of impatience or indifference, so long on the job, but, of course, none of it. Solicitous, compassionate, cheerful, and yes indeed, entertaining! Through Elva and her co-workers, Debbie, Donna, John and Margaret who also visited #11, the recovery room people behaved as they do every day with a selfless concern for their charges in a special effort to ensure their well-being. No… not just a job… a vocation.

Most of the current public discussion about our health-care system is focused on its alleged deficiencies. Under funding, wait times, inadequate facilities and the reality of the shortage of physicians and nurses. When one has been there, however briefly, and experienced the situation in our community, another story emerges. A picture of professionalism, dedication and commitment on the part of medical and nursing staff in our public hospitals. What I experienced in meeting the recovery room people can be found throughout the system. If you doubt what I say, I might arrange a stay for you as a patient in the recovery room. Still, you’d probably prefer to take my word for it. – D.W.S.